Africa-Press – Botswana. The media practitioners have been urged to up their game and take a lead in telling the true African story to the world.
“I am passionate about the African story and how it should be told. The University of Botswana (UB) is equally interested in telling the African story. We are working together to achieve the shared vision of re-telling the African story,” said Professor Onkgopotse JJ Tabane.
Hosting a Media Round Table Chat Session on Friday in Gaborone, Prof. Tabane, a communications expert and academic, host of Power to the Truth on eNCA, and currently an Adjunct Professor of Media Studies at UB said one of his projects with the university would be to work with Africa’s media in presenting the potential possessed by the continent to the world.
He said lack of African voice on the perceived African stories was a challenge presenting the African media with an opportunity to re-write the narrative.
Prof Tabane will in the near future host a full lecture at UB elaborating on his projects with Media Studies faculty and the university as a whole.
“I challenge the media to go out there and find the African voice and bring it forth in telling stories of our people. You have long been liberated, but still do not have the capacity to tell the African story,” he said.
Prof. Tabane said funding would never be a challenge in re-writing the African story, but the only setback was shortage of like-minded media personnel, script writers, film and documentary producers working together to rewrite the story of Africa.
“There is a serious shortage of content on Africa. Africa has a positive story, a story of Pan Africanism, a story of African renaissance to tell to the world,” he said.
He said capacity-building was primarily the foundation of his aspired dream of uniting Africa and shaping perceptions of the world by telling the truth, the good, the beauty, the rich and diverse culture of Africa, , which he was driving with UB.
Professor Tabane said Africa’s image was tainted by negative stories of war and famine among others, therefore it would take collective efforts by its media personnel to tell the world the continent’s beauty.
“When I first came at UB, one thing that fascinated me and caught my attention was the statue of a cow being tracked by a man. I enquired about the cow that was standing there as if it was some form of an idol, only to learn that the university came into being through the spirit of volunteerism where members of the public made contributions of livestock and other valuables through an initiative dubbed; Motho le motho kgomo,” he said
Prof. Tabane told his audience that it was unfortunate that such stories of self-reliance and ingenuity were still buried as they were never told. “It is high time we tell the beautiful story of Botswana diamonds. We know what the diamond industry has done to the economy of the country and livelihoods, but it is yet to be fully documented,” he said.
“I am told that Kasane is a tourism hub for Botswana with countless wildlife species, but remains less documented. Documenting and telling our beautiful stories to the world will impact positively on our people,” he said.
For the African story to be told afresh, Prof. Tabane said was important to build capacity of the story tellers.
Guided by the Setswana platitude lore lo ojwa lo sale metsi,’ Prof. Tabane said the development must start now by preparing and empowering media and film industry students with the necessary resources to rewrite the African Story.
“Let us intervene now for them to get a bout of consciousness,” he said. He said capacity building started with an individual, therefore compiling truthful African stories would take committed and willing media.
He said telling the African story was a project that would take collaborated efforts, therefore creating a network of the media in Africa was important. Prof. Tabane said a complete Botswana story would not be told by someone who was not informed about the said location, the SADC region and equally aware of the continent.
“We will work on creating a network of the media/story tellers. Our focus will be on telling the African story better,” he said.
Without knowing the truth about the continent, Prof. Tabane said it would be difficult for the African people to unite, do business together, ease movement and empower their economy.
“The envisaged African Free Trade Agreement will not be fully achieved without knowledge on the continent,” he said. “I doubt that anyone has approached the AU with the idea of an African tv channel, presenting the importance and power of using our people to sell our continent,” he said. Prof. Tabane said UB would be a place to plant a seed of telling the African story afresh.
“We must do something concrete to establish an African voice. We have amazing talent in film producers and script writers. We must pull resources together and have a Pan Africanist voice,” he said.
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